Fifty Shades of White

Our new house needed, ahem, some work. I had sold myself on the idea that the funky yellow-and-burgundy tile plus creamsicle-orange sink and bathtub of the downstairs bathroom was…. retro. The toilet that isn’t on a perpendicular axis to the wall of the powder room? Quirky and still decidedly… usable! The pink paint on the room off the kitchen? Barely noticeable… very pale pink indeed.

But I really couldn’t deal with a few things: the orange-and-green cabinets, the janky old oven that was fresh out of 1981, and the tile floor in the kitchen.

I knew kitchen renovations were expensive. But my favorite home improvement bloggers have taught me that paint is magic. So I decided the first thing we needed to do was to paint the orange and green cabinets. And by “paint” I mean “pay someone to paint.” Husband didn’t trust me with a paintbrush anymore, and cabinets seemed harder than walls, so I acquiesced.

But first, I needed to pick a shade of white.

Last time I painted, I was pretty chill about shade-picking. I grabbed a couple of the paint-color-sheet-thingies at Home Depot, looked at them a bit at home, said “Dolphin Gray it is!” and bought the paint.

This time I lost my mind over paint selection.

I first decided that we needed to get Fancy Paint. There was a time in my life when I didn’t realize that different brands of paint had different levels of fanciness.  That was a time in the past, from before I started reading home improvement blogs.  And once I learned that there were different fancinesses of paint, I knew that for our kitchen cabinets of the very first home we owned, we were going to get some DANGED fancy paint.

I quickly ran into the first problem with Fancy Paint. Your Regular Paint is sold at Home Depot, which is open whenever, and I know where it is and I just wander in and get paint and no one looks at me funny for wearing my paint pants and an old Mock Trial t-shirt covered in drops of Dolphin Gray. Fancy Paint is sold at Fancy Specialty Paint Stores, which have hours like 4 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays during the week of the month where the moon is waning. Painters must work at ridiculous times of day.

Not being an anthropomorphized Disney songbird, I don’t wake up with the dawn and I don’t wake up early enough to leave any spare time before work. So with all of the Fancy Paint Shoppes closed by the time I left work, lunch was the only time I could go get paint chips. So I drove into town to the Fancy Paint Shoppe.

I walked in and wandered to the paint chips section, where I proceeded to spend forty minutes staring blankly at a selection of approximately two frillion colors of white. It was mesmerizing. No, paralyzing. A woman offered to help me several times and I declined in mumbles. Finally I snapped out of it, grabbed every paint chip with something white on it, and bought three tiny sample pots of white paint.

the madness

The next few days I was a menace to all around me.

Liz: “Vanilla milkshake is definitely out, because it’s way too gray. I’m really going back and forth between Bavarian Cream and White Chocolate. I want something warm, but Mayonnaise is too yellowy.”

My coworker: “I’m starving. Do you want to get lunch?”

[the next day]

Liz: “I've tried a bunch... but I feel like Oxford White is the white I want, but none of the stores have it, even though it's listed on the paint company website!  And I feel like it is the IDEAL white!”

Mom: “Didn’t you say that about Mountain Peak White yesterday?”

[the next day]

Husband: “You promised you wouldn’t buy any more paint samples.”

Liz: “Well, technically I didn’t - they didn’t have this one in samples so I had to buy a quart of the actual paint. But I have a really good feeling about this one! It’s crisp linen!”

Husband: “Wasn’t the LAST one Crisp Linen?”

Liz: “No, that was Linen White! Totally different!”

[the next day]

Liz: “Did you get my text?”

Dad: “I did but… what am I even looking at, here?”

---------------

I finally settled on a shade of white: Cream Froth. It looked a lot like Mountain Peak White. It also looked a lot like Crisp Linen. But Cream Froth it was, and I was pleased to have selected one of the delicious-sounding ones.

We were finally a go with the painter.

It was so exciting the day we saw all the doors get de-orangified:

And it looked SO MUCH better when it was done….

In case you had forgotten how it looked orange…

Then all that was left was the installation of the new oven.  Poor Husband.  But that's another story.

Hopefully the improved cabinetry is worth all the paint-shade-madness I inflicted on everyone around me. I’ve hidden all of the leftover paint samples in the garage so Husband will hopefully forget about how I went crazy. And I had almost forgotten, too, until we went to Home Depot yesterday to look at some blinds* for the house. We had identified the kind we wanted when the guy asked us which color we wanted...

There was white white. Pure white. Silk white. Optic white. Chantilly. I started seeing spots in front of my eyes…

Husband: “Silk white.”

Liz (whispered): “Thank you.”




*None of the following should surprise you given what I have told you about this house:  There were blinds on the house originally, but they were tan-colored rusting metal mini-blinds.  The realtors apparently threw a fit about them and made the owners take them off before showing the home.  We found them in the garage after we moved in.  They were pretty gross.

At Long Last: Bathroom Repaint Days 4 Through Whatever

The bathroom is finally finished.

Perhaps, dear reader, you thought I had died in my quest to improve the paint color of my beleaguered guest bathroom, succumbing to severe DIYtis induced by too much HGTV and insufficient sun exposure.  Indeed, it was close.  But I have emerged, phoenix-like, not from the ashes but from the pulmonary-disease causing spackle dust.  And when I arose, it was in a nicely painted bathroom.

When last I left you, dear reader, I hadn't even begun actually to paint.  But rather than describe in exhaustive narrative the rest of the process, I shall provide it to you in a series of snappy statistics and summaries.

Day 4:  Actually Painting

Time spent painting first coat, using, alternately, a large roller, a small roller, and a paintbrush:  3 hours

Time spent painting second coat:  1.5 hours

Time spent, before painting anything, realizing that I had removed all the lighting from the bathroom and wrangling Husband's intense work lights from the garage into the bathroom so I could see:  30 minutes

Number of elevation devices needed:  2 (a stepstool and a ladder)

Number of soccer sandals remaining intact and unripped after painting:  1

Number of insane blurry pictures taken in attempt to document painting task without getting paint on iPhone:  3

Quantity of mess created:  Above average

At this point, I thought I was done painting.  

*Cue Jaws two-note musical motif*

Day 5:  Thinking about removing the tape

Amount of painter's tape removed:  2-6 inches, before wigging out, realizing the paint was coming with the tape, and deciding the paint must not be dry enough yet 

Additional amount of time allocated to let paint dry before removing tape:  24 hours

Day 6:  Removing the tape

Amount of painters tape removed easily:  3 inches
Amount of painters tape that would not be removed at all and remained stuck under the paint:  about 10 feet

Amount of painters tape that started tearing the paint when pulled away:  all the rest

Amount of painters tape removed using indignation and Exacto knives:  all of it minus 3 inches

AUGH

Amount of residual damage from tape tearing up recently applied paint:  substantial

This was only one small part.

Time spent Googling painter's tape before realizing you are supposed to remove it while the paint is still wet:  20-40 minutes

Number of fixtures rehung:  4 (mirror, lights, towel hook, towel rack)

Day 7:  Sulking

Number of small paintbrushes (for retouching) ordered on amazon.com:  1

Number of shower caddies evidently stolen by gardeners whilst said shower caddy awaited rinsing from death-dust in the yard:  1

Day 8:  Not painting because I was going to dinner with my friend and didn't want to get paint in my hair

Day 9:  Retouching

Number of good feelings about dragging all the ladders in the bathroom again:  0

Average amount of time I left painters tape on the wall: 30 seconds

Total amount of time spent touching up edges and scraping off excess paint on tile: 4 hours

Colors of sandals worn over socks (yes, fellas, I'm taken):  2

Quantity of nap left in dried paint by stupid cheap small roller:  nonzero (so frustrating)

Number of photos taken of the retouching process:  0 (due to total sulkiness)

Day 10 through 22:  Avoiding Thinking About It

Because:  It was so annoying with the tape!  Ugh!

Including:  Not writing a blog post concluding the series

But... drumroll please....

The Final Results!

New art!  That I made!  Surprise!

By the way, the paint TOTALLY covered the staples I put through the rubber baseboard thing into the wall.  So I remain unpersuaded that it is inappropriate to staple your home when necessary.  Frankly, that stapled bit is probably the best construction in this house.

Here's a before-and-after comparison of the room (befores on the left, afters on the right):

I am using the trick of having the bathroom be cleaner in the "after" shot

Finale

All in all, I think it looks better, though the difference doesn't show up as starkly in these photos as it does in real life.  The paint is a lot nicer.  I am glad I did it, though I underestimated the difficulty involved in painting crappy drywall.  A bathroom is hard enough to paint when you have to avoid cabinets and tiles, but when the wall itself is bumpy and rotting and otherwise problematic, it makes the task so much harder.  This job was so much harder than it was to paint my old bedroom in my parents' house, for example.  

Also, this whole shebang would have been a lot easier if I'd known you need to remove painter's tape while the paint is still wet.  That added an extra day of work with touch-ups that I might not have needed to do otherwise.  

The bathroom looks nicer now.  But I don't intend to do any more intensive improvements solely for my landlord's benefit.  This would feel a lot more worth it if I owned this house.  And frankly, if I owned this house, I'd hire someone so I didn't have to do it myself.  Though I'm not convinced even a paid painter could have dealt with this crappy drywall all that much better than I did.

phew.

Discussion Questions:

Why do you think Liz's gardeners stole her shower caddy out of her backyard? Should she go to the trouble of trying to ascertain their identity from her landlord to confront them with the theft, considering the landlord will probably use the instance somehow to raise Liz's rent?

"You Don't Want to Know Why I Need the Staple Gun": Part 3 of Bathroom Repainting

Today, I tried to put all thoughts of spackle behind me and get a-painting!  The only problem was that I did not get the absolute earliest start I could have because... I slept in until 11 a.m.  And then I had to eat a bowl of cereal and post on the ol' blog, since I have to entertain all you beautiful people with my spackle-related travails.  And then I remembered my paint pants were still in the washing machine after I had washed them last night to get the EVIL DUST out.

My paint pants.  About what you'd expect.

So by the time I started taping the edges of the ceiling and the door and the cabinets, it was about 1 p.m.  I got out the blue tape and started taping.  I actually kind of liked how all the edges looked all blue; it made our boring bathroom look sort of interesting!

Taping itself is pretty boring, though.  First, I called Husband to say hi.  Our phone conversations when he is at work generally go the way they would if I were a puppy who had learned how to talk and use an iPhone:

Liz:  Hi!  Hi!  Hi!  How are you?
Husband:  I'm at work.
Liz:  I know!  What are you doing?  Did you eat lunch yet?  When are you coming home?
Husband:  I have to go to a meeting now.  I'll talk to you later, okay?
Liz:  Okay!  You should come home soon!

It was approximately 1:30 p.m.  

I taped a little more and then realized taping would be so much better with music.  I tried to plug in my iPhone to the stereo and could not figure out how to make it turn on.  I've done it before, but the screen on the stereo is broken so it's hard to tell: 1) whether it is on or off; 2) what input it is currently set on; 3) if it is on mute or not; 4) really anything that might help you play music on it.  

[Aside:  Ironically, Husband's car has the same problem: the display on the stereo is broken so you can't see what radio station you are on or anything.  You just have to keep searching around until you find something decent.  This is ironic because Husband is an engineer who can fix pretty much anything: he's fixed my car in about 9 different ways, he is rebuilding an old car, and it is family lore that even as a child, he used to take apart various home electronics and put them back together to the bafflement of his non-technically-inclined parents.  Apparently stereo displays are his kryptonite?]

I couldn't get the stereo to do anything or in any way indicate that it was involved in the making of sounds.  So I called Husband again, who said he didn't really know how to do it either and I would just have to fiddle with it.  That didn't work, so I got out the tiny little portable speakers and brought them into the bathroom with me.  And then I listened to some Carly Rae and T.Swift for awhile and kept taping.

And then I noticed that the rubber toekick molding (on the wall by the floor) was coming loose from the wall at one place in a way that paint would not effectively cover.  I have been trying to ignore a lot of the problems I have noticed during this project - the problem with looking for flaws to fix is apparently that you find way more than are fixable - but this one was ticking me off.  So I decided to try to glue it back to the wall using the only glue I could find: Mod Podge and a tiny piece of sponge.

If you are looking at that picture and saying, "Girl, that is NOT HAPPENING," well, I am compelled to agree.  It did not work at all.  So I started thinking and the thought came to me:  staple gun.  Staple guns can affix anything to anything.  So I tried to think where the staple gun was but couldn't find it on the work bench.

I called Husband again, and as the phone was ringing I was mentally planning out the conversation: 

Husband:  Why do you need the staple gun?
Liz:  Don't ask questions you don't want to know the answer to.

... but Husband had developed the good sense to stop answering my phone calls and didn't pick up.  So I hunted around some more using the light app on my iPhone and voila!  I found the staple gun, along with a bunch of types of glue that would have worked way better than Mod Podge.  But by this point I was in staple mode.

I went in, positioned the staple gun perfectly, and ka-chunk.  I moved the gun and looked and there was no staple.  Confused, I wondered if it was out of staples and tried stapling at nothing, but a staple fell out so that wasn't it.  I positioned it again and ka-chunk... and no staple.

My inner voice started screaming "What witchcraft is this?" and that was the moment.  The moment when I became crazy desperate redecorating lady who is a total wreck and will most likely end up destroying her house rather than improving it.  This photo that I accidentally took effectively expresses my feelings at the moment:

And then I realized.  I had been positioning the staple gun upside down so I had actually just stapled into the wall twice.

I was, to use a fine expression, wigging out.  All my wigs were just everywhere.  I ran to the garage and grabbed a tiny pair of pliers and desperately yanked on the staples in the wall, which wouldn't come out because the pliers kept slipping off.  I kept at it and finally, finally, managed to remove both staples and staple the stupid stupid rubber thingy properly.  And that paint had better cover those staples but if I doesn't I don't even care.

You can see them just above the blue tape in the middle.

To calm down, I listened to Good Time three or four more times.  And then put on my C.Rae.Jep Pandora station for awhile.  Until my stupid little speakers ran out of battery, leaving me stupidly confused as to why the music had gone away.

After all of this, I was cranky and hungry so took a break to make trail mix out of chocolate chips and almonds and craisins and pink Himalayan sea salt (because I'm fancy, huh) and then ended up watching several episodes of Property Virgins on HGTV because I was so over taping.

I eventually got back to it.  Taping over the areas around the toilet was challenging because it's right between the vanity and the bathtub, so I was doing a series of moves that, if you replaced the papered-over toilet with a chair, might serve as choreography for Don't Tell Mama from the Broadway musical Cabaret.  I was also having fun covering lovely fixtures like this:

Because heaven forbid THAT get paint on it.  It might look ugly!

Once I had all the edges of things taped up carefully and nicely (because those lines are the lines you get!), I started covering the horizontal surfaces to protect against drips.  This involved emptying out my recycle bin and using old magazines because drop cloths are for sissies. By which I mean professionals.  Professional painters, I am sorry I just called you sissies.  

Those photos are also like a Where's Waldo of the millions of magazine subscriptions I described a little while ago as well as some catalogs.  Try to spot the National Geographic poster of Mauna Kea!  In any case, I may have gone a little overboard with covering stuff, but I'm paranoid about drips.  After all this crap I've been doing, I don't want drips.

By this point, it was getting rather dark in the bathroom because, as you may recall, there is no active light fixture at the moment.  And Husband has this big light thing he uses in the garage, but guess who isn't answering his phone?  So I decided to wait to put on that first coat until he could hook me up with the light and the sun came back in force to that side of the house.  So, tomorrow.  

The ultimate big news is that after three days, I still haven't started painting yet.  I probably could have done one coat if I hadn't started so late and taken that HGTV break, but c'est la vie.  Honestly, the easiest part is yet to come.  All I have to do now on this painting project is paint.  And that's always a good time.  Right?  

The supplies await patiently.

Tomorrow:  the finish line.  (I sincerely hope.)